Short version of a long answer:
Only seeing white people as action heroes, while also only seeing black people as ex-slaves or kids from the hood gives society a collective unconscious prejudice.
It's called implicit association, and the best way to overcome it is seeing minorities do good things or at least the same things everyone else does.
Not true. There are multiple books that cover this issue. Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" is the most accessible. Banaji & Greenwald's "Blindspot" is significantly more comprehensive.
All sources agree that more exposure to African Americans in positive positions leads to lower implicit association of "Black" and "Bad".
@bethorien what are your sources?
just look at the sheer amount of people that groan (and sometimes rage) and avidly dislike anything that forces a black or female focus on a character. It's so prominent that people were actively worried that the possible blackwidow movie will be just "oh look its black widow the woman doing awesome woman things as a womany woman woman."
it absolutely ruins a film when the fact a character is a woman or a minority is mentioned a million fucking times or if its the focus of the god damn movie people will remember it as a bad movie about a black person or a bad movie about a woman rather than whatever quality of movie about (character name or anything thats actually important about the character)
Only seeing white people as action heroes, while also only seeing black people as ex-slaves or kids from the hood gives society a collective unconscious prejudice.
It's called implicit association, and the best way to overcome it is seeing minorities do good things or at least the same things everyone else does.
All sources agree that more exposure to African Americans in positive positions leads to lower implicit association of "Black" and "Bad".
@bethorien what are your sources?
it absolutely ruins a film when the fact a character is a woman or a minority is mentioned a million fucking times or if its the focus of the god damn movie people will remember it as a bad movie about a black person or a bad movie about a woman rather than whatever quality of movie about (character name or anything thats actually important about the character)